more info about them here
Thats incredibly good.
I play “Low” by Flo-Ridaover and over - I’m almost 42 years old. I like Eminem and k-os, too. Good music is good music.
Oh - here’s the explanation - one of the comments for that video says; “this song is fucking dope”. Well, that’s why you like it! 
That’s a guilty pleasure song for me, too. I don’t normally like hip-hop or rap, but that song plus some things by Timbaland I really like.
And this is surprisingly good. Hooray for new music.
It’s gotta nice beat and you can dance to it, but…
“All I know is the sun is shining,
Yet we fight all through the night…”
So, is the sun shining at night, then?
“while the 'bergs are melting and the sea is rising I don’t know so I ask them why”
You ask who? The icebergs? The seas? Do they answer?
Cheap-ass poetry. More Hip-Hop cRap.
Huh? If you’re walking down the street on a sunny day, why would it be illogical to sing these lines?
You can argue that it isn’t good poetry if you want, but it is silly to parse it out of context and then claim it doesn’t make sense.
Okay, then I do argue that it isn’t good poetry, and part of the reason is that it’s a self-contradictory sentence. Either the sun is shining, or it’s night.
And in what way is the quote out of context? It’s the first two lines from the song, so they aren’t characterized by anything that’s come before. And (at least as far as grammar is relevant in poetry or song lyrics) they appear to be a complete sentence. The ‘context’ is intact.
If your point is that the sun may shine all day, and the persons in question may then be fighting all through the night, and that this is not contradictory, then I ask you what you think that lyric means? To me, the whole point is that it’s a shame to fight when it’s such a beautiful day, and yet they’re fighting at night. It’s a bad lyric.
It’s about the problems facing the world today - global warming and the war in Iraq. It’s pretty plain to understand.
Yo, yo, yo, I’m an old school poet.
…bitch
…shit.
Yup, I can see where he’s be mistaken for say, Rod McKuen or even Shakespeare.
Actually, I do like it. Too bad I can’t play it at work.
Oh, I’m pretty sure I understand what they MEAN to say. I would say it’s about the futility of fighting each other when global problems like pollution and climate change should be what we’re focusing on, and how the singer(s) are way too cool to fall into that trap. A fine sentiment. I just feel they’re expressing it with bad poetry.
In addition to the confused phrases I’ve mentioned above, there also seem to be non sequitur passages, such as:
“I grab a loop of this rhythm it’s puts the juice in my pistons”
Which is a silly metaphor (juice in pistons? I guess oil can be slangily referred to as ‘juice’ …) and also has nothing to do with their larger theme in the piece.
And there’s this, too:
“I don’t want them to look back when the future is written
and know we killed ourselves with nuclear vision and stupid decisions”
I suppose they mean when history is written. People writing the future shouldn’t really be portrayed as ‘looking back’.
What I’m saying is… nice beat or no, nice sentiment or no, the lyrics are bad.
I think it means the same thing you do. A guy walks down the street, enjoying a beautiful day. His thoughts stray to the big problems of today and he wonders why we would waste our lives on war.
‘Fight on through the night’ doesn’t imply that there isn’t also fighting during the day. Night is meant to contrast with day in the same way as peace contrasts with war. These simple contrasts show up in song lyrics all of the time. Deep? Not particularly, but it isn’t contradictory.
By out of context I meant this:
Nothing in the first two lines indicate that the sun and night occur at the same moment. I found the objection to be disingenuous, but I apologize if you were sincere.
I’m not a particular fan of hip-hop, but I do like some of the material put out by the Blue Scholars. For example:
Joe Metro is a good overview of the RT. 48 bus line in Seattle.
Back Home is an anti-war song.
No need to apologize. Debate is fun!
I disagree that “nothing in the first two lines indicate that the sun and night occur at the same moment.” I think that is what the lines say. But even if I’m wrong about the implied timing, they seem to say that we shouldn’t fight at night, because the sun shines during the day. This, to me, is a fairly weak argument.
Again, I think there’s a big difference between what the singers (or rappers, or possibly the completely-other-people-who-actually-wrote-it) are TRYING to say, and what they’re ACTUALLY SAYING. To me, this is what makes it bad.
The “yeah, but I know what you meant” school of music appreciation holds no interest for me. Either express your thought, or don’t.
The first time I heard T-Pain’s *Buy U a Drank *(yeah, it’s “drank”, not “drink”) my friend promised I wouldn’t get through more than 2 minutes of it. He was right.
However, the mash up of Buy U a Drank and Cloud Cult’s *Chemicals Collide *(Collide U a Drank) is awesome! Indie pop and hip hop, who’da thunk it?
ETA: Oh, duh, I’ve also been listening to *The Nosebleed Section *by Hilltop Hoods. It’s Australian hip hop set to Melanie Safka’s People in the Front Row, which is a great song in its own right.
After I first heard “Handlebars”, by Flobots, I was totally won over.
And I did the same thing-- listen to it over and over again.
Even now, if you catch me the right mood, I tear up. It’s powerful stuff.
This mashup of Paper Planes by M.I.A. with Bun B and Rich Boy is astoundingly good.
I play this all the time too.
(NSFW lyrics.)
I loved the song, but had never seen the video before. Gave me chills! Good times.
I am not normally a fan of the whole “listen to the song over and over again” thing, but this song got me. Good flow, and the music gets in my head in a big way.
Missed Edit window:
If you liked the song in the OP, you could take a look at some of the stuff from Fort Minor.
Political, sort of, but still nice. Rough rhymes though.
A rather scathing inditement of the “gangsta rap” world.
Ok, enough fanboy wanking. My love is temporary, as it is for most bands. Hehe
I don’t know whether you are allowed to hijack your own thread but I find it really interesting what has happened in this one.
I wrote the OP because I was pleasantly surprised to find a hip hop song that I liked that was about something. It kind of felt like the folk music of my youth (the 60s). They say things like:
*real magic isn’t card tricks big cribs and cars bitch
it’s making something out of nothing through this hardship
*
and
it’s like this land is either run by labor or liberal
but don’t get twisted they’re the same as the criminals
open your eyes simply notice the issue
that we stuck to our guns without promoting the pistol.*
Now some posters bought in to that although I hadn’t realized or articulated it and recommended equally cool stuff like Flobots, Blue Scholars and Fort Minor.
So lets stick with that. Rather than critiques of hip hop (as a 55 year old I’ve done plenty) what other young hip hop voices have something to say.
*Aussie equivalent to Democrats and Republicans